Immaculate Conception as a sort of assumption of soul completed in Assumption of body and soul

Mary as the ephod of priesthood

Mary as Tabernacle (the Word tabernacled among us)

Virginity as understood by the Fathers is not a mere physical condition but a spiritual one; thus the perpetual virginity of Mary is more than a claim about sexual status.

consentient council of doctors (Vincent of Lerins)

immortality as a postulate of philosophical inquiry (cp Rep 611e-612a)

sages -> nobles -> merchants -> mobs/gangs -> warlords

All probabilities presuppose a prior division of a universe of discourse.

Trust creates social resilience.

The key question for any society is: What makes this society one? What does the real work of integration?

unexpected coherences as motives of credibility

approaches to personal identity // approaches to change

Relying on immigrants for one's work is not structurally different from relying on mercenaries for one's army.

Human beings are present to each other by signs; in some cases we can make ourselves the signs by which we are present to others -- but also in some cases this can be more difficult than it sounds.

The ordinary presence of God is not primarily by sign; rather, He is present in such a way that that to which He is present is a sign of Him.

"A prophet mediates between the angels and the people." Aquinas

Theological insight can be welcomed but cannot be forced.

Statesmanship must be guided by reason, but by a reason that takes sympathy into account.

Solomon's Temple is loftier than the temples of natural reason.

The Jews more than any other people have understood the powerful truth that nations are signs, and that nations must form themselves as signs of things that are not base.

the canonical Spirit,
exceeding all measure,
measuring all

Chance sometimes proves the wisest strategist.

philotimia, philomatheia, and philanthropia as propaedeutics to philosophia

Xenophon & the importance of making virtue visible

"Questioning is a kind of teaching." Xenophon

utilitarianism as reducing human beings to their productive value as a source of profit (that the human beings may share in the profit is not relevant -- actual sharing of profit only enters as producing)

the nonrational creation as a trust

the improvement of moral thought by metaphor and exhortation

the parable of the Good Samaritan and the sacraments of initiation (inn, oil, wine)

almsdeeds as sabbath rest

the wonderful, the uncanny, the fantastic

"Sameness consists of at least three elements: for there to be sameness a thing must needs be the same as another according to a particular condition." Marsilio Ficino

The reason for trusting rules is so that we can trust people more, not less.

the Passion as sacramental premotion

Tobit 12:15 // Rv 8:2-4

oil as a symbol of Mary (cf Gregory Thaumaturgos)

the natural respect of a man for his tools

No one but God is an expert on God.

reflections of angelic choir in the prayer of the Church

boredom-quit and frustration-quit in argument/inquiry

the importance of "unexpected flashes of instruction" through "fortuitous collision of happy incidents, or an involuntary concurrence of ideas" (Johnson Rambler 154)

Wealth does not spoil character, but it can accelerate the spoiling of it.

"The heretics cling to one point -- that the sacrament is figurative -- and to that extent they are not heretics." Pascal

pleasure and pain as good qua remedial
pleasure as a coming-to-be

arguments against usury
(1) from protection of the poor
(2) from justice of exchange
(3) from sterility of usury

Live-and-let-live requires a presupposition of harmlessness.

three-eyed Plato is a swan

Reductionism usually consists entirely of a network of metaphors.

"mind belongs to that kind which is cause of everything" Philebus 30e

immediate vs memory-mediated pleasures

People are more likely to get angry at being accused of lacking knowledge than they are when accused of lacking pleasure.

Justice requires calling the noblest things by the noblest names.

Outrage may be a legitimate motivation, but even so it is not a plan.

patience as the marrow of piety (Catherine of Siena)

The possibility of supererogation follows from any position that allows a distinction between the first principles of practical reason and the principles of obligation.

Ecclesiastes as a book of repentance (Wesley)

consciousness as partial conscience

Bragging is not about inducing believes in others -- people brag to people they know will not believe them, and peopl brag in cases where the point is simply to make themselves feel better.

Each of the Ten Commandments indicates a way in which human beings violate divine prerogatives or act as gods over others.

Arguments from divine hiddenness boil down to the claim that if God's existence is not self-evident to us, God does not exist.

In coming to know God from creation, we come to see creation in a new light.

sacred languages as memory systems for the Church

"Unless we have a moral principle about such delicate matters as marriage and murder, the whole world will become a welter of exceptions with no rules. There will be so many hard cases that everything will go soft." Chesterton

wine "intended to be a medicine and to produce reverence in the soul and health and strength in the body' (Laws672d)

Lack of evidence only becomes significant in itself through complicated counterfactual reasoning.

"the way to heaven is like heaven itself" Sigrid Undset

True love of God and neighbor requires the prayer of faith.

Grace is the beginning of faith.

religious festivals as periods for restoration of character (Laws 653b)

'Induction approximates truth because of uniformity of nature' vs 'Induction approximates truth by ruling out causes of falsehood' (Peirce is esp. good on this)

"the poetic tribe, with the aid of Graces and Muses, often grasps the truth of history" (Laws 682a)

A very significant number of bad skeptical inferences consist of conflating immediate and particular grounds of particular inferences with remote and general grounds of knowledge in general.

Most arguments over burden of proof are signs of intellectual laziness; they involve arguing over who is supposed to do the work.

Desert is a social concept.

"the moderate man is God's friend, being like him" (Laws 716d)

"mankind is by nature a companion of eternity" (Laws 721c)

"Truth heads the list of all things good, for gods and men alike." (Laws 736)

Theos is the first word of Plato's Laws.

All human authority is implicit in human nature, which is given by God, and by human work it is specified and furthered.

modesty & treating oneself as a person

the preludial system of legislation is especially appropriate to natural law theory

constancy and coherence as intimations of the real

the First Way and the intrinsic conditions of empirical experience

St. Catherine of Siena and moral miracles of conversion
the episode of the moldy flour in St. Catherine's life as an emblem of salvation

personal identity // transworld identity // material constitution

vagueness states // possible states or temporal states
(i.e., vagueness as an unusual diamond modality)

a church as a memory palace

matrimony as the sacrament of hospitality

the fate-level and the free-will-level of a narrative

The water of natural marriage becomes the wine of sacramental matrimony.

Love enlivens virtue.

the primary thesis of Plato's Laws: Law is a sort of divine order because it expresses reason, which is the divine in us because it has kinship with the gods.

"What we call a bad civilization is a civilization not good enough for us." Chesterton

Labeling oneself a skeptic remarkably often leads into the intellectual laziness of not bothering to earn the label with serious thought.

"It is when the work has passed from mind to mind that it becomes a work of art." Chesterton

All states not explicitly recognizing institutions beyond their control tend toward the totalitarian.

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Caveats

For a rough introduction to my philosophy of blogging, including the Code of Amiability I try to follow on this weblog, please read my fifth anniversary post. I consider blogging to be a very informal type of publishing - like putting up thoughts on your door with a note asking for comments. Nothing in this weblog is done rigorously: it's a forum to let my mind be unruly, a place for jottings and first impressions. Because I consider posts here to be 'literary seedings' rather than finished products, nothing here should be taken as if it were anything more than an attempt to rough out some basic thoughts on various issues. Learning to look at any topic philosophically requires, I think, jumping right in, even knowing that you might be making a fool of yourelf; so that's what I do. My primary interest in most topics is the flow and structure of reasoning they involve rather than their actual conclusions, so most of my posts are about that. If, however, you find me making a clear factual error, let me know; blogging is a great way to get rid of misconceptions.